Did Unity Mitford have Adolf Hitler's love child?

She was the English aristocrat who became so enamoured with Hitler that she shot herself in the head at the outbreak of war.

Unity Mitford, the daughter of Lord Redesdale, had been so entwined in the Führer’s inner circle that British secret services described her as “more Nazi than the Nazis”. But could this cousin of Winston Churchill have been closer to Hitler than anyone suspected?

An article published today raises the possibility that Mitford, who survived her suicide attempt, may have given birth to his child.

If the theory that this baby was born in a tiny Cotswolds village and rapidly adopted were true, Hitler’s child could be living somewhere in Britain today....

[Martin Bright, writing in the New Statesman about this story], who remains deeply sceptical about the possibility of a Hitler Jr, has thrown in the towel.

The makers of a forthcoming Channel 4 documentary, Hitler’s British Girl, examined theories surrounding Mitford’s notorious life and concluded that there was very little evidence that she was pregnant or ever had a sexual relationship with Hitler.

Whereas some might consider the idea of her giving birth to the Führer’s only offspring to be a harmless and intriguing tale, Richard Evans, Professor of Modern History at the University of Cambridge, thinks differently. “Unity Mitford’s relationship with Hitler was basically political,” he said. “She was a hard-line Nazi and a rabid racist and antiSemite, and I’m worried that gossip about her personal life might take attention away from these facts.”